


Safe Harbor

by JazzRaft



Series: Dark at Night [37]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-30 00:48:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18304787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: There are ghosts in the water that follow him from Altissia. He sees them beneath the waves as he throws up over the boat. Noctis never got seasick. He'd never feared the sea. Altissia changed that. It changedhim.It didn't, however, change Nyx. He still wants to learn how to fish.





	Safe Harbor

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/183848088452/hi-i-love-all-of-your-works-they-never-fail-to) for an anonymous request!

Noctis didn’t _get_ seasick.

Not even on his first boat ride as a vomit-prone toddler did he get seasick. Yet here he was, more than a decade after finding his sea legs while casting lines off the sides of state park canoes and all other manner of fishing vessels, and he couldn’t keep his stomach from spewing over the starboard side.

It felt like his body was lurching in five different directions. He couldn’t find his footing, couldn’t regain his balance before his head tumbled one way and his stomach went in another. He felt so dizzy, and disoriented, and so damn _small_.

The ocean was so vast, so deep, so dark and cold and endless, and he was just a piece of flotsam on the surface for it to swallow. The water could rise up and take them at any moment, all of them mere specks that could never satisfy its hunger for how tiny they all were. And this far out, no one would ever see them sink or hear them scream.

They’d end up just like Luna.

They’d end up just like all those missing people in Altissia, lost forever beneath the unfathomable dark blue, devoured by whatever ancient, unknowable monster lurked at the very bottom of the sea. No one would ever find their bodies. Their bones would be crushed into granules of sand, scattered across an eternity of freezing, wet, writhing darkness, moving with millions of horrible creatures he couldn’t see, but that were always there, always watching, with all their teeth opened wide…

Noctis twisted over the railing again and hurled.

The tidal waves of nausea kept crashing against the back of his tongue, timing themselves to the end of every replay shuttering behind his eyes. He saw hundreds of faces – strangers in the vibrant crowds, families waving across the canals, pets on windowsills, kids throwing paper airplanes in the plaza – all underwater, all bulging eyes, white faces, and open mouths of soundless screams as they floated down to oblivion.

His fingertips felt as cold as that bottomless oblivion. They’d been wrapped so tightly around the railing for so long that they ached with bloodless numb. Even when he pulled back from the side, slumping down to the deck, he couldn’t let go. He felt like they could capsize at any second now. He could hear Leviathan howling in the distance, in the hollows of his ears. What if he couldn’t control her? What if he took them all down to the depths with him?

He hadn’t stopped being sick since they set sail. He should have listened to Gladio after all. They should have taken that train, should have kept moving forward instead of running back to Caem.

But it had made so much sense when Nyx suggested it. “Regroup and resupply,” he’d said, with all the war-weary authority of a man who had exchanged those very same orders, time and time again. “The Empire isn’t going anywhere.”

And he would know. He’d been fighting said Empire for half of his life. Nyx had more experience in the field than all four of them combined, so when they all deferred to Noctis for a decision after they couldn’t come to one themselves, he thought Nyx was right.

He knew Gladio hated that. He knew that he thought Noctis was letting his heart get in the way of his head. But in the aftermath of such senseless disaster, Nyx was the only one of them who looked like he had any idea what he was doing. As if that wasn’t evident enough by the way he barely blinked at Iggy’s terrible injuries. As if he’d seen a hundred soldiers suffer from explosions that resulted in the exact same ones – and lest they forget he shared those same scars himself, the wrath of the Lucii still carved in silver claws across his own face.

There would be another train for them to take, but there might not be another safe place for them to rest for a while. That thought made Noctis feel sick, too. He squeezed his eyes shut and clamped his jaw closed. There was nothing left to heave from his stomach. Just the nightmare imprints of what they’d left behind, and all the new nightmares ahead of them still.

Nyx’s shadow rolled over him like a storm cloud, gently slipping into the coast from out at sea. He crouched down next to him, slowly shading the glare of the sun behind his shoulders.

Noctis could barely bring himself to look at him. Six, he must have been a miserable sight. Nyx must have felt as disgusted as Noctis did that _this_ was what Lucis had to look forward; that the prophetic king Nyx had nearly sacrificed himself for was just this shivering, seasick _child_ huddled against the corner of his dad’s boat.

So many people had died for him, sacrificed everything for him, and he couldn’t even bring himself to stand up for a single one of them. He didn’t deserve the brush of Nyx’s hand against his face. He wasn’t worth the patience in his eyes, or the kindness tiring out his smile. No matter how much he’d tried to push him away though, tried to keep Nyx safe by putting as much distance between them as he could, the man just kept striding across it to catch him; the inexorable storm chasing above Noct’s roiling sea.

“I don’t understand,” Noctis confessed, tightly. He was afraid that if he opened his mouth, worse than words would spill out. “This has never happened before.”

“We’re almost there.”

Nyx was nice enough to sit with him for the rest of the voyage, holding a hand against his shoulder to keep him from going overboard every time he gagged up air, and spit, and self-loathing. Noctis pressed his forehead to the metal railing, the coolness of it cracking open against his skin like a fissure of ice. He didn’t look up again until the rocking of the waves finally crashed against the shore, and stilled.

He couldn’t get onto the dock fast enough, gulping down the motion sickness as quickly as he could. He’d been useless the whole journey, he just needed a second for his stomach to settle, then he could turn back and lend a hand. But by the time he was ready, Gladio had already helped Iggy off the gangplank, and Prompto was helping Nyx secure the vessel for the night.

They didn’t need him.

He felt like he was going to be sick all over again.

* * *

When he looked in the mirror, his face was as white and slick as the rubber gloves of the triage nurses they were forced to abandon to their grim work in Altissia. His eyes were red and glassy, and his jaw ached from clenching his teeth for so much of the ride home.

He wished he could say that he didn’t recognize himself. He wished that he could tell himself he didn’t always look this pitiful, this _weak._ But he’d been acquainted with this very same reflection for far longer than Altissia.

_Some king._

A heavy sigh shuddered through his whole body, dropping from his shoulders like a lead weight. He gripped the edges of the sink to keep himself from being dragged down to his knees with it. The nausea might have stayed out at sea, but it had left him feeling empty, like someone had taken a spoon to his insides and hollowed everything out. His stomach quaked from the inside-out, leaving him light-headed and trembling with the effort it took to stay standing.

The knock on the bathroom door was soft, and yet it nearly snapped his grip. He didn’t think anyone would be awake this time of night. He thought he could just have a moment to himself where no one was watching and waiting to see him be better than he was. He thought he could just take a second to fall apart without all of the expectations that he shouldn’t…

“Noct? It’s only me.”

Of course it was only Nyx. There wasn’t a single dark night since the first one Noct needed him where Nyx didn’t come running to protect him from his nightmares.

It was different this time, though. The nightmares weren’t in his head anymore. Just like he’d always feared, they’d finally come true.

Noctis swallowed his guilt like a clump of rusty shards, gave his reflection another hopeless once-over, and braced himself to face Nyx. “Sorry,” he said, trying to hasten out the door past him. “One bathroom in a house of eight people – shouldn’t hog it, right?”

As if his thinly veiled excuses to escape Nyx’s compassionate intuition had ever worked before. Nyx caught him before he could run away; like a fisherman’s net, the thick bond of his fingers looped around Noct’s arm, and he was as helpless to the touch as a fish pulled out of water.

“Come with me.”

The house was silent as they crept through, murky tendrils of moonlight bleeding between the drafts in the walls to waltz like phantoms around the kitchen. Funny how quickly Caem had turned from a refuge into a grave. The living may have been quiet, all cowering behind their dreams in the rooms above, but the dead were restless down below.

Nyx firmly steered Noctis away from those ghosts, leading him out the door and into the night. Before Altissia, nightfall had been full of as many thrills as it had dangers. Waking in the middle of the night to Nyx’s unshaven kisses searing against his neck had been a welcome return to their torrid escapes into the night, where no one else dared to look for them. Where they could just _be,_ and breathe, and remind themselves that, even when it felt like they’d lost everyone, they still had each other.

Noctis had ached for these stolen, secret nights. They were the only moments where he felt like he could do anything right. He wanted so badly to feel that way again, wanted to at least please Nyx if he could please no one else.

But his stomach still twisted as they climbed up to the lighthouse. His heart failed him, sinking to the bottom of his chest with the descent of the elevator. Fear chased any illusions of comfort from Noct’s head once he saw the royal vessel again, dozing in the secret harbor.

“Where are we going?”

“Not far,” Nyx promised. “Just you and me, little king.”

It almost hurt to hear him say that. Guilt and yearning clenched in his gut like fists. He wanted so badly to be that for him – his little _king_ – but he still felt like the sad, small, sick _prince_ stuck in his bed, searching for his father in his dreams.

Nyx held his hand, pressing upon the blade of grass spun around his finger like a ring. It was the only ring that mattered to Noct; a promise made when there had still been one ray of hope for them to rush after in the darkness. That last light had gone out, but even in the dark, he could still see Nyx.

“Trust me?” Nyx asked, a sliver of doubt just barely cracking beneath his voice.

He asked as if he were afraid, too. As if, after all the destruction left behind them, the promise between them had also been destroyed. As if, in the wake of everything the future expected of Noctis, he’d forgotten that he’d ever wanted a future with Nyx.

Nothing had ever scared him more than loving Nyx, fearing that he could only have him just to lose him. And just when he thought he’d been proven right, as he watched his city burn to the symphony of a voicemail box that wouldn’t pick up, there Nyx had been, fighting through that fire to prove all of his fears wrong.

Nyx had followed him through hellfire. Noctis could follow him through the ocean deep.

“Lead the way, hero.”

Nyx guided the boat from the harbor, deftly maneuvering around the rocky corners of the cove until they were coasting into open water. The water was black, a void of darkness spread out all around them. It parted around the ship’s prow like shattering glass, sharp white edges of moonlight breaking across the ripples.

Noctis couldn’t see his own reflection in the inky surface. The sea devoured all light, erasing his own identity from the surface. He was nothing to it. Just one more ripple, there and gone again, unnoticed by the endless, ebony fathoms. That used to be what he loved about the sea; that he could pass over it unrecognized for the title he never wanted to inherit; that the sea expected nothing of him. Now, it just reminded him that he had nothing to give, even if it did.

Noctis forced himself away from the edge of the boat, willing himself not to resume his seasick sentry. He sat squarely in the middle and focused on breathing. There were less distractions this time, less eyes on him, less lives risked on his behalf while on the unpredictable tides.

They’d be fine. It was just him and Nyx… him and _Nyx._ Gods, what if Nyx got hurt again? What if he fell overboard trying to be a damn gentleman by holding Noct’s hair back from his face while he puked? What if there were ghosts in the water? What if they all latched onto him and dragged Nyx down where Noct could never find him again? What if they were angry? Vengeful? What if it wasn’t fair that they all drowned when Nyx didn’t even burn? Why should the prince that failed them keep the man that never did?

“Teach me how to fish.”

Noctis blinked, catching himself from listing in his seat. He stared up at Nyx, uncomprehending. “You know how to fish.”

“Not like you do,” Nyx insisted. He cocked his head towards the bow of the ship. “C’mon, show off for me. I could use some tips from the master.”

Nyx sat down on the edge of the ship, right in the spot where Noctis had cast off time and time again, for hours on end, dragging out their landing in Altissia in spite of all his friends’ moans and groans. Noctis bit his lip, bracing his arms across his chest to steady his stomach. He already felt his knees shaking.

But Nyx was there, looking over his shoulder with an expectant smile. And there was nowhere Noctis wanted to be more than by his side. That had to be worth fighting through his fear.

Nyx was patient with him, didn’t rush him into the simple act of sitting down. He sat a little too close to him, cross-legged, with his knee jammed into Nyx’s thigh. But Nyx let him tuck close without complaint, bracing Noct against his shoulder. He leaned back on his hands, perfectly comfortable in spite of how uncomfortable Noctis knew he had to be making him, dangling his feet over the edge and baiting whatever was underneath into jumping up and dragging him overboard.

Noctis tried to settle as best he could, shivering and shrinking from the briny chill cloying up from the depths. Nyx shrugged out of his coat, careful not to jostle him, and draped the singed garment over Noct’s shoulders.

“First thing’s first,” Nyx said, before he could object. “Find a comfortable position, right?”

He crooked a smile at Noct. Fractals of blue fluttered across his skin, catching the moonlight off of the water. His eyes glowed silver, like the twinkling scales of fish flitting below the reflections of starlight. He wasn’t afraid, not of the sea or of Noct. He wasn’t afraid to follow him into that uncertain future after all the chaos he’d left in their past. He was ready to dive into the depths for him. The least Noctis could do was throw him a line.

“Right.” He called his fishing rod to his hand, the soft tinkle of crystal magic a familiar tune. “So you pick a spot, spool your line… um, this one’s all ready.”

Nyx nodded. “Then you pick a lure, right?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know which one to use?”

Noctis took a breath, purging the rest of the tremors from his chest. “It depends on where you are, what you’re looking for. Different fish like different lures. This time of night, there should be a lot of barrelfish around. But we might luck out and reel in a grouper.”

He checked the lure to make sure it was secure, glanced at Nyx to draw a little more courage from his smile, and cast the line into the sea. Ripples of starlight plated out from the lure’s muted splash, a single, stern warning to the schools of glittering fish. hiding below.

“And now we wait?” Nyx asked.

“And now we wait.”

“Man, what are we ever going to do in the meantime?”

Nyx bumped his head against Noct’s, teasing him with a tender kiss just above his ear. His own laughter surprised Noctis, meek and brief of a sound though it was. After all the awfulness that had come out of his mouth for the past twenty-four hours, laughter was a refreshing taste on his tongue. It tasted like sea-salt.

“I thought you wanted to learn?”

“I do. But I wanted this more.”

Nyx touched his lips to the edge of Noct’s, marking the small crease where his smile was just starting to peer back against his cheek. Nyx grinned at him, cupping his face in the palm of his hand. Warmth engulfed his skin, like the tide washing over the shore. Nyx always felt so much bigger than him, as big as the sea Noct loved as much as he feared.

His eyes could swallow him whole, and never be satisfied with what he got. He always came back for more, always tried to make Noctis feel like he was a part of him, rather than just floating across his surface. He sought to submerge him, inviting him underneath the stormy, gray-blue peaks of his eyes to discover all the secrets underneath. There was an infinite expanse of light and life below, if he was just brave enough to open his eyes and see.

“I haven’t seen you smile in a while,” Nyx murmured, the rough pad of his thumb against Noct’s lips.

“It’s been hard to find a reason to,” Noctis confessed. “It feels like this is never going to end.”

That was really what he was afraid of: the endlessness. That everything left that he loved, he was going to lose, and he would be left alone in a purgatory of his own making without them. He couldn’t see the bottom of the ocean. He couldn’t see it ever stopping. He never thought he would be afraid of that.

Nyx anchored him above water with a hand in his hair, binding through the messy strands and holding tight – not enough to hurt, _never_ enough to hurt, but enough to feel him there, to feel like he wasn’t letting go.

“One day, it will,” Nyx said. “And when it is, when all of this is over, we’ll still have this.” He looked out to the sea, turning Noct’s face to the open water. The moon was full, heavy with light in the center of the sky. If he looked out far enough, he could see its reflection. “Don’t let this war ruin who you are, Noct. That’s how they’ll win.”

The fabled days of his childhood, tumbling down to the tide-pools ahead of his father’s fretful cries; the sighs and slides of phones glowing at his back, his friends resigned, but never objecting, to his every request to fish; his renegade first kiss with Nyx, hidden just outside the Wall, with the whole sea and all its endless possibilities stretched out beneath them. One day – one horrible, wrathful day of sea-spray and a sinking city trapped in his skull – had drowned out hundreds more. Hundreds of days just like this one, everything calm and quiet, the bobbing of the boat lulling him into dreams of buried treasure and mermaids tugging on his line.

The world was so full of wonders for him. He was afraid he was never going to see it that way again. And if he wasn’t the one to save it, he never would.

“I’m with you.” Nyx’s voice called him up from the depths. “All the way to the end, little king. And then, it’s smooth sailing for the both of us.”

Noctis smiled again. Nyx rewarded him with another kiss. _Smooth_ _sailing…_ It sounded like such a certainty, coming from Nyx’s mouth.

Noctis took another breath of the sea air, the whispers of faraway places on the wind. Of stopping points in the endlessness, ports in the storm; safe harbors out at sea. He was docked at one right now, a warm respite from the crash of the waves against his hull. He leaned his head against Nyx’s shoulder, letting one leg dangle over the side of the ship next to his.

“Think you’ll sing me a shanty and everything?” he teased.

Nyx snorted, tugging his coat around Noct’s shoulders. “Thought you wanted to _catch_ fish, not chase them away.”

“I want you to lure them in with your siren song.”

Nyx chuckled, shaking his head, the undulating blue gloom of the water softening the silver in his eyes. There was plenty to fear in the depths ahead, but so much more to discover. Maybe he’d been lost at sea for a little too long, seen too many monsters rise from the deep.

So long as there was a silver light on in the harbor, maybe he could still find his way back home.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are greatly appreciated! Let me know if you liked what you read! <3


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